A clever novel, disguised as self-help

Mohsin Hamid discusses 'How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia'

Mohsin Hamid’s novel “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia” made more than a dozen “Best of” lists last year, praised for its cleverness, its exuberance, its sly way of marrying a fortune-hunting tale with a love story.

The book, just out in paperback, begins each chapter with a self-help rule — “Move to the City,” “Get an Education,” “Avoid Idealists” — before shifting quickly into the narrative about an unnamed boy in an unnamed city pursuing both his business dreams and a romantic partner known only as “the pretty girl.”

Hamid will be at Warwick’s Thursday at 7:30 p.m. He answered questions by email from Lahore, Pakistan, where he lives.

Q: Where did you get the idea to do your novel in the guise of a self-help book?

A: I started to wonder if we read novels to help ourselves. That led me to thinking whether I, as a writer, write novels to help myself. So I wanted to play with the idea, to write a rags-to-riches story that pretends to try to help you make a fortune, and along the way evolves into something more sincere, into a love story that maybe really does try to help you (and me), but in a different way.

Q: What self-help books might we find on your own bookshelves?

A: Not too many! My wife and I do have some books on how to breast-feed babies, that sort of thing. Parental self-help, you might say. And of course, if novels are self-help books, we have thousands of them.

Q: Your characters here don’t have names, nor do the places. Why?

A: Partly because I wanted to leave space for the reader to imagine themselves inside the story of the book. And partly because I wanted it to be a story that could happen in almost any Asian megacity — or even in an African or Latin American one.

Q: This is a short book (240 pages) that feels big because of the time covered and the themes explored. How do you manage that compression?

A: I think of it like sampling, the way a music download can be small and still contain an entire song. I write details and moments, and let the reader’s imagination link them together and expand them. So there aren’t that many pages, but there’s a big story.

Q: Do you write short intentionally, and if so, why?

A: In Pakistan, where I’ve lived half my life, most people I knew growing up didn’t read novels. So I wanted to write novels that non-readers would be interested in reading too. And I did that, in part, by making my novels short, which actually takes me a very long time. I like the idea that if a novel really grabs you, you can read it in a single day.

Q: The book traces the arc of one entrepreneur’s life and the arc of one romance. What do you hope readers think about in terms of both arcs?